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Famous Friends, A Mysterious Painting, and Food Art

My friends Michael and Kim are local celebrities, as some of you may recall. You can see them here in the Gettysburg Visitor’s Guide. They’re in the banner at the top of the site, and in the magazine as the pages are flipping. (Updated 4/13–they’re not on the website anymore. New pictures are on it now.)

They are The Happy Family in the Visitor’s Guide. Every now and then, they get recognized by a tourist. The last time was about two weeks ago when they were eating ice cream at Mr. G’s. The tourist bemoaned the fact that her Visitor’s Guide was back at the hotel and she couldn’t get an autograph.

Somewhere along the line, Michael’s sister, Kelley, started reading The Blog. Due to the subliminal messages I hide in The Blog, she got addicted to it, just as you have. So when she planned to leave her home in Detroit to visit her brother Michael, she knew what she had to do: get off the airplane and head directly to Li’s Buffet with The Happy Family and her favorite blogger, Dustylizard.

Look at this picture:

This is Tom. Who is Tom? I don’t know! But doesn’t he look familiar? When Michael called to say that he and Kelley were on their way from the airport, he said, “A surprise visitor will be coming, too.” When we arrived at the restaurant, Michael said, “Here’s the surprise visitor: Tom.” And for a moment, I was thinking, “Oh look! It’s ol’ Tom! Tom and I go waaaay back.” But then I remembered that I’ve never met Tom before.

But that didn’t stop us from having a great time. We spent a great deal of energy trying to sort out this painting:

This is hanging in the room with the tables that seat 8 and 10. Whenever we come with a group, we’re put in this room with this mysterious picture.

Are these babies? If so, how are they strong enough to row? Or maybe they’re unwrinkly old men. But if they’re old men, why are they naked? And what are they singing? They’re clearly singing. I’ve pondered these questions through many a meal at Li’s Buffet. If you have any insights into this painting, I’d love to hear it.

There was only one thing missing from our experience at Li’s Buffet.

Jin.

Jin!

Jin was missing. Jin is the owner’s son and always takes the time to stop and chat with us whenever we eat at Li’s Buffet. But today is Jin’s birthday, so he had the day off.

As you all may remember, whenever we celebrate a birthday at Li’s Buffet, Mr. Li will make food sculptures for us and the staff will sing a sedate “Happy Birthday.”

How could we let Jin’s birthday go by without a food sculpture? We couldn’t! Of course, no one had a clue how to create a food sculpture, but then Darling Husband had the idea that we could spell out the words Happy Birthday with rice. Fortunately, Kim is an artist and Kelley was a floral designer, so the two of them were on the job. Here they are:

And here is their masterpiece:

Happy Birthday, Jin!

It was great to finally meet you in person, Kelley. And you, too, Tom!

2 thoughts on “Famous Friends, A Mysterious Painting, and Food Art”

My life is complete, I made the blog:) I love how Kim and I look so professional in our approach to food art, I was obvously really concentrating on my task of separating sticky rice into individual pieces, which by the way is not easy…there’s a reason it’s called sticky rice!